Experts have weighed in with predictions for what will matter in IT in the coming year, and chief among them are customer service, IT/business alignment and collaboration. The challenge, however, is teaching staff the soft skills needed to turn the predictions into reality.

You cannot solve a problem if you don’t have the facts. Combine this one with a hearty serving of patience.

We’ve assembled a few tips to give your help desk an edge over its competitors in the IT of the Future. Remember, these are only to be used as a guideline. Progress, not perfection.

1. Put yourself in the customer’s situation: Responding to a frustrated and angry customer with frustration and anger will only lead to chaos (perhaps not quite chaos, but surely extreme irritation). Not that I condone rudeness, but try to imagine how you would feel if, say, you are set to deliver a year-end report to your manager and all of your formulas are displaying #REF! errors. Acknowledge the customer’s legitimate frustrations, and find a solution.

2. Think of yourself as a teacher: You aren’t just a PC-on-fire extinguisher; you also have the ability to empower by teaching a caller something he didn’t know.

3. Convince yourself that it’s OK to not know something: Faking it, in many cases, creates more distrust than simply telling someone that a particular issue is beyond your scope. Fess up, and hand the call to a more seasoned colleague. The customer will have his issue fixed quicker, and will leave happier. Read more…

admin Customer Service 2010, Excel, Help Desk, IT, IT/business alignment, new year, soft skills

It’s that time of year when we look back on what was and ponder what is to come. The year 2009 brought a number of significant tech developments — the iPhone as a legitimate business tool (AT&T’s bandwidth issues notwithstanding); the Cloud’s emergence; grandmothers embracing social media; Windows 7 — all of which promise to change the way we work.

Still, all our readers cared about was learning how to use a secondary axis in Excel, how to change BlackBerry calendar views, and why help desk techs are so surly.

Here’s a list of our top 10 posts from 2009. Read and enjoy.

10. Get It Together: 5 Ways to Stay Organized in Outlook
9. 5 Lessons to Learn Before Outsourcing
8. A Kinder, Gentler Help Desk
7. Top 5 Most-Asked Help Desk Questions
6. 7 Productivity-Boosting iPhone Tips
5. Out of Office, Out of Mind
4. How the Help Desk Earns its Bad Reputation
3. Follow the Format: 5 MS Word Tips for Managers
2. 4 BlackBerry Tips Every Manager Should Know
1. Management Tool Best Practices: 3 Excel Tips that Promise Charting Greatness

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admin Year in Review BlackBerry, Excel, FACEBOOK, How To, iPhone, Outlook, Social Media, the Cloud, tips and tricks, Twitter, Windows Mobile

In an April post, I looked at the financial impact human error can have on a company. With news of Best Buy’s recent web site pricing doozy, it seems only fitting to revisit the issue.

Yesterday, Best Buy shocked customers with a whopper of a deal: a 52-inch Samsung HDTV for $9.99. Orders came in and credit cards were charged. Some customers attempted to buy up to 10 televisions each.

Best Buy issued a statement saying it would not honor the pricing error, so it may have saved itself heaps of money. Some companies haven’t been so lucky.

It was a mistake, of course, and the company corrected it promptly. The sale price should have been listed as $1,699.99. Still, customers were miffed, and Best Buy had to get to the business of refunding credit cards that had been charged, and doing a little reputation management via its web site, on Twitter, and elsewhere.

Best Buy issued a statement saying it would not honor the pricing error, so it may have saved itself heaps of money. Some companies haven’t been so lucky. Foul-ups involving a few decimal places may seem innocuous, but even the smallest mistake can cause millions of dollars in damage.

Consider the results of a landmark Dartmouth College study, which I wrote about in April. It offers a clear picture of what’s at stake. Read more…

admin FAIL Best Buy, calculations, Dartmouth College, Excel, HDTVs, pricing error, Twitter

Although the economic slump may be ending sometime soon, companies are still scrutinizing budgets and trying to squeeze as much work possible out of every employee. We’ve covered productivity often in this blog — from Excel calculations that can cost companies thousands to the debate over whether social media and instant messaging are detrimental to productivity.

Here’s a roundup of some of our favorite posts. Read on and tell us what your company is doing to get the most out of its resources.

• Downtime Revisited
• Instant Messaging Increases Productivity, Study Reveals
• Chaos Among the Calculations
• Raising Backyard Chickens, or Getting Back to Basics
• SLAs, Software Ninjas & Streamlining IT

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admin Worker Productivity chickens, Excel, instant messaging, ninjas, SLAs

3 Essential Tips IT Leaders Should Share with Staff and Customers

Our consultants rarely come across a question that hasn’t been asked before. Experience and stats collected over the last 15 years, from more than 4 million end-users, prove that most callers have problems with the same general areas of an application or operating system. And although navigating through a few levels to open an Read more…

admin How To, Worker Productivity do more with less, Excel, Help Desk, productivity, recession, thumb drive, Vista, Windows XP

Every workplace has an office tech expert. Someone who knows how to use Excel formulas, can put up a good fight with a gnarly mail merge, and knows what temp files are and why they should be cleared.

They’re valuable people to have on your team. If only more of your employees were so clever with the computer, your business would hum.

Shadow support may seem harmless, but it’s actually taking two employees away from their jobs. That’s double-downtime.

Unfortunately, not everyone’s strength is software or logic — and that’s just fine. (I can’t do my own taxes; that’s why I outsource it to my mother.) However, you cannot continue relying on the office computer guy forever. As much as he saves your office’s collective rear-end on a regular basis, the time he’s spending doing something other than his job is costing you dearly.

There are two types of downtime: unavoidable and avoidable. Unavoidable downtime includes hardware malfunctions or network connectivity problems — problems that will always exist and are really just part of running an IT infrastructure.

Avoidable downtime is where the office expert comes in, and includes shadow support, self-help, and no help at all. Read more…

admin ROI, Worker Productivity Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, downtime, Excel, mail merge, PowerPoint, productivity, TCO

If you are managing the IT infrastructure, senior-level projects or are the IT leader in charge of maintaining and analyzing the majority of IT’s data points, you’re likely using Microsoft Excel every day. Read more…

admin Excel, How To charts, Excel, secondary axis

Efficiency. It’s the unofficial buzzword of 2009. It may summon fear in corporate workers; after all, it’s often heard as justification for layoffs. But that unassuming little noun can also motivate your employees, and maybe even give them renewed interest in your company. It depends on how you package it.

In a recent post on TechRepublic, Calvin Sun offers 10 tips on the subject. Here are three that warrant elaboration:

Less Imaginary Widgets, More Genuine Examples

If one of your employees is fumbling with the Access sample database “Northwind,” it’s no wonder. Read more…

admin Excel, Office 2007, Worker Productivity American Airlines, Calvin Sun, cheese, efficiency, Excel, learning, Office 2007, TechRepublic, Training, Worker Productivity

In an earlier post, I brought attention to the buzz surrounding automated software support and its possible impact on companies. Now, I want to ask an important follow-up:

Do you consider software support from a live technician a luxury in the current economy? If so, think again. Without it, your company may be inviting chaos. Read more…

admin Excel, How To, ROI, Worker Productivity automation, Excel, Help Desk, Outsourcing, recession, ROI, self-help support, software support, Worker Productivity

Forget a leisurely Sunday drive or going to a restaurant without a reservation. Today, everyone wants everything to be convenient and fast. We have drive-through everything – photos, pharmacies, weddings, and anything else you can dream of.

There’s no need to wait in line at the local Blockbuster; you can watch Netflix on demand. You can order your groceries online and have them delivered, print a boarding pass at the airport kiosk (no humans necessary!), and have your dry-cleaning delivered with just a click. Even GPS systems, which were once a luxury in cars, are becoming a standard. Have we lost our sense of direction? No, we like having a faster, more convenient way of getting there. Read more…

admin Excel, ROI, Worker Productivity Excel, Help Desk, ROI, software support, Worker Productivity